Drink to my health — but moderately

Published 12:00 am, Sunday, March 30, 2014

SAN ANTONIO — You've heard that knocking back a few drinks is good for you, right? There are plenty of studies that say so.

So why don't you hoist a few to your good health. And to mine, too, while we're at it.

Not so fast, Bacchus. The studies you're talking about usually focus on “average” alcohol consumption. That's defined as no more than one drink a day for a woman and two a day for a man. But a recent study suggests that, like the children of Lake Wobegon, a surprising number of people are above average, at least when it comes to drinking.

And that can cause big problems, especially among older adults. How big? How's double-the-risk-of-dying big?

“Average consumption refers to the amount of alcohol consumed on an average day,” said Holahan in an email interview. His study, on the other hand, examined the
pattern of drinking.

“Specifically, binge drinking is consuming four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men on a single occasion,” said Holahan.

Consider two people. The first has a nightly glass of wine with dinner. The second drinks sparingly or not at all during most of the week only to guzzle a six-pack-and-a-half during a Friday night party. Both people can be said to “average” about one drink a day, but while most of us would consider the first person a “healthy” drinker, the second is most definitely a binger.

The problem comes, during his annual checkup, when the doctor asks the binger how much he drinks in a week and he answers, “Seven to 10 drinks.” On the surface that doesn't sound too bad. But then, the doc wasn't with him as he partied hard Friday night.

Holahan's study, which will be published online in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, is one of the first to specifically examine the effects of binge drinking on older adults. It used data from a larger study to explore the drinking habits of 446 people (334 men and 112 women) between 55 and 65 years of age. Of those, 372 were regular moderate drinkers, that is, one drink a night. The other 74 were moderate drinkers who occasionally binged.

The researchers had at least 20 years of health data on those in the study and when they examined the death certificates of those who died during that period, they found the mortality rate to be twice as high in those who were binge drinkers as in the truly moderate imbibers.

Binge drinking is increasingly being recognized as a serious threat to public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently concluded it is “a bigger problem than previously thought.” The problem with binging is it concentrates alcohol's toxicity, damaging the organs and increasing risk of accidents, including falls and car crashes. It can be particularly harmful to older adults because they tend to be sicker and on more medications than younger drinkers.

The study did not look specifically at when people engage in binge drinking. But Holahan said he'd guess it most often occurs with friends on weekends.